I'm still confused about the purpose behind these laws. Are there still adults stupid enough to think that watching porn will mess a kid up? Because there's now two whole generations of kids who have grown up watching porn (my generation, and the one after). So far younger people don't seem any more fucked up than people were before, only the older people seem to be getting worse.
There's quite a few accounts on here that will argue in good faith and bad faith that people enjoying oral, anal, gay, bi, or any kink has already ruined society, whether it's solely via porn or real life.
The argument usually starts with an assumption that nobody did those things before and it's obvious that life was better before for everyone when those things were viewed as shameful.
Personally I think it's been known for centuries that sex is a pleasurable activity and controlling pleasure is a good way to control people.
> Are there still adults stupid enough to think that watching porn will mess a kid up?
This absolutely is a real problem, especially for younger kids. Have you talked to a teacher? Think things like "a kindergartner runs around grabbing teachers' tits and saying "I want to ..." lines you'd expect from a rape work like 50 Shades of Gray. It is neither in the child's interest nor in the interest of society at large to let that happen. And for every case that's as obviously bad as that one, who knows how many come off as creeps or even manage to appear normal from the outside, while suffering the trauma internally?
Remember, the status quo on the Internet is no control at all. Real-world sex businesses aren't allowed to get away with that, why should the Internet be exempt from laws? Just because the government is slow and incompetent to get started doesn't mean we can stick with "self-regulate, aka no regulation at all".
We can argue about exactly what the law should be, and we can argue how it should be implemented, but there absolutely must be something.
What you're talking about is internalized normalization of abuse. The kid was probably molested. Very unfortunate, but these things happen without porn. I'd talk to experts about this rather than assume "porn did it". And in any case, if a kid is behaving like that, you can then educate them on how to behave properly; the same would be true if the kid was punching other kids in the face. (and by the way, the "porn make kids bad" argument was the one used against violent video games years ago; turns out kids don't mimic everything they see in a screen)
If you absolutely must have a barrier to entry, let it be a credit card or other form of payment (everyone likes free porn, but sex work is real work and deserves to be paid). It's something not a lot of kids have access to (a bank account) and you don't have to track people's identities anymore. (Kids can steal their parents' cards but that's on the parents.)
Knives are useful. What's the the benefit of porn? Before I discovered porn, I just used my imagination and got the same level of "entertainment" as you now must get from porn.
Porn does harm some people, as it's easy to get addicted to it, and there's a lot of bad things happening on the supply side of it. I'm sure porn has also changed how people behave and what people expect in relationships, but it's hard to study such things. The amount of sex we have has decreased recently. I don't know if it's due to porn, but it'd be worth studying. If sexual satisfaction is easily available, there's less reason to seek the real thing.
It's beyond parents to fix these things, at best they can delay the discovery of porn for a few years, but that doesn't fix anything.
What is a benefit of a video game? People can get addicted on gaming, let's ban it. What is a benefit a of a good steak? It is not healthy, let's ban it.
You don't like stuff other people enjoy and then you will go out of your way with ludicrous excuses to destroy it for others. Like a religious bigot.
Well sure, there's entertainment value. But there's plenty of harmful things that people enjoy that we ban because the entertainment value is not worth the downsides. I enjoy driving very fast, but I'm not allowed to do it (except in very limited areas) because the negative effects outweigh the positive ones.
Very well said, and true. However, the post the parent was replying to said, "Are there still adults stupid enough to think that watching porn will mess a kid up?", which represents an unreasonable absolute.
> Are there still adults stupid enough to think that watching porn will mess a kid up?
Not only this but there seems to be no one on mainstream platforms putting forward the argument that what will mess kids up is a lack of access to sex education, which the bill also restricts.
I started watching in my early teens. It did, in fact, mess me up. I overconsumed, would explore increasingly more intense material for the dopamine hits, and couldn't stop. It fucked years of my life.
That said, these laws are bad and counterproductive. They create more (worse) problems than they solve. What I went through could have been averted if I understood the health impacts and risks. Back then, no one knew, and no one talked about it. I also don't know how representative my particular case was. I endured many years of chronic insomnia, anxiety, self-loathing and depression.
Not sure if youd find me me smart or stupid, but in my immediate experience a youth in my circle was influenced negatively by porn. It won't be every kid, and yes his parents should have watched him, better, but they have little influence over him from the grave.
The fact that you believe there simply is no argument on the other side regarding porn (not censorship) - implied by the assertion that one must be "stupid" to believe that watching porn can be detrimental for children - is exhausting.
>So far younger people don't seem any more fucked up than people were before, only the older people seem to be getting worse.
If you look at levels of depression, sexual disfunction the steep drop in relationships and dating among younger people and other metrics you could argue the exact opposite, although obviously there are other factors (social media, ect) in how "messed up" generations are besides the widespread watching of porn by children.
"Other factors" is doing a heavy lifting here. I don't have a skin in this game, but politicians are scared to touch the elephant in the room (smartphones + social media), because they know they'll get a flack instantly. I don't think porn consumption among teenage girls are high, yet their depression rates are high as well.
No skin in the game here either. I'd agree that smartphones and social media are also very damaging.
>I don't think porn consumption among teenage girls are high, yet their depression rates are high as well.
That isn't what the data says.
>Seventy-three percent of the respondents (75 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls) said they had watched online pornography. The average age they started was 12. Many began younger.
>Seven in 10 who admitted they had watched porn intentionally said they had done so in the past week.
>Four in 10 said they had watched pornography, including nudity and sexual acts, during the school day. Almost half said they had done so on school-owned devices.
>Of those who watched the past week, 80 percent said they had seen “what appears to be rape, choking, or someone in pain.”
>Fewer than half (43 percent) said they had discussed pornography with a trusted adult. (Robb and Mann, 2023).
I'm certainly no puritan, but it seems absurd to me to suggest that this early and mostly ubiquitous exposure to (often violent) pornography doesn't have a significant negative effect on the developing minds of children.
Edit: Just to be clear, my contention that children watching pornography is harmful to their development is in no way an endorsement of the crusade to force users to link their IDs to their online accounts under the fig leaf of "protecting children" (the universal trope used to deprive people of their rights).
This is very broad, we both know what "being too much into porn" means. I doubt that an average girl watches as much porn as an average man. And let me put it this way, most of my friends (guys and girls) are far from being puritan. Consumption type between these two groups is significantly different.
But I might be making stuff up. I just think social media is more damaging, because kids start comparing themselves to everyone else. In this case, everyone else became "global everyone else" rather than "local everyone else" (which was the case back in my middle school days). I feel like that's the biggest problem, because you people see what they're missing out on, which is basically unavailable to 99% of population. That simple thought process would bring down any kid.
>I doubt that an average girl watches as much porn as an average man.
If you are talking about men and women, perhaps that is true. I'm not of the opinion that watching pornography as an adult matters much one way or the other once your psyche is fully developed. The original OP regarded children and their development, and the study I cited was taken among children aged 13-17. These aren't my numbers, this is a peer-reviewed study.
>Seven in 10 who admitted they had watched porn
intentionally said they had done so in the past week.
>Seventy-three percent of the respondents (75 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls) said they had watched online pornography. The average age they started was 12. Many began younger.
I also think social media is more damaging to children, but it isn't a zero sum game. With or without social media, I don't see how anyone can credibly argue that child exposure to (often extremely violent) hardcore pornography isn't a contributing negative factor.
If you go one level up in "abstraction" for what these platforms include, then e.g. Instagram immediately springs to mind. But since they've long since washed their hands, having banned nipples.
It's that people are so stupid as to ostensibly outsource parental responsibility to a dystopian, dysfunctional government to encroach on the rights of everyone because "think of the children".
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
